


The Island Case

by gala_apples



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Behavioral Analysis Unit (Criminal Minds), Established Relationship, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Triadverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 07:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11031075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: If a profiler is going to have a long distance relationship, at least she's smart enough to have it with two people living in Los Santos, the city with the highest number of serial killers per capita, the city which she can visit most often. Except then there's the question of Gavin.





	The Island Case

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with triadverse, it's a universe in which relationships of three rather than two are the standard.

Because Los Santos is a hellhole, the LSPD only contacts the BAU after the twelfth death. Andy, their newest profiler, is shocked and horrified. Everyone else in the private jet is aware of basic demographics; primarily that the Los Santos murder rate makes Chicago look like Norway, or Canada. There’s a thin line between serial killer and a new gang branding itself.

Bethany makes a great liaison director; the summation of the case takes a fraction of the flight time. Meg spends almost all of the rest of the flight texting Lindsay, who is increasingly more adventurous about what the next few days will entail. Meg’s almost positive the only reason she’s not getting a straight up sext is because it’s her work phone. You never know when your communications will be reviewed.

With the joy of hooking up with her boyfriend and girlfriend on the near horizon it’s hard to believe that Meg was a bit worried about dating Lindsay at first. Not for any reason her nosy, Facebook-advice family might have assigned to her though. 

It wasn’t because of the gender thing. Yes, Meg had grown up imagining getting married to two men, just like the vast majority of boys imagine marrying two women. It’s basic math; for a marriage to occur two of the spouses have to be wrong about their assumptions. The first time Meg laid eyes on Lindsay her mind opened to same sex relationships. Definitely not the problem.

Nor was it the long distance thing. Maybe if she’d only been looking for her first she would have turned away at Michael’s proposition, thinking the chance of a first wasn’t worth the hassle of long distance. Hell, even if Meg had already had a first and she and they had been searching for a second together things might have been different. But she’s Michael and Lindsay’s second, and while it doesn’t make her secondary it does change things. When it becomes increasingly clear your entire heart lives in Nevada you take on challenges you wouldn’t have bothered with for a lesser benefit. 

No, the real problem had been that while Meg’s a hop skip and jump from team leader and Michael is a detective, Lindsay is a check out clerk at a grocery store. Meg doesn’t look down on the job. Frankly she doesn’t look down at much of anything, apart from the obvious. Still, it’s a concern. Civilians don’t tend to last long with those in the law enforcement profession; Burnie, Ashley, and Terra are one example, Tyler and his slew of ex husbands another. She can’t take the length of Michael and Lindsay’s relationship as proof that everything will be okay, rather it looks like just closer to relationship detonation. But she loves them enough that she can’t walk away.

The jet lands at the smaller of the two airports. The other’s under the fairly frequent emergency occurrence of some gang having broken in in an attempt to steal a plane. Outlandish in any other city in America, but the exact reason Los Santos has two airports, so that traffic can be rerouted. 

Upon disembarking the team would normally split up, a couple to the most recent scene or scenes, a couple to the coroner, a couple to the precinct. This time everyone goes to the station. It’s standard operating procedure for any contractors. No matter what career field, corporate contractors get police protection for the duration of their stay. According to Michael it’s a sweet posting, lots of opportunity for excitement when the locals don’t like outsider competition. The officers that leave with certain teammates certainly look happy.

Michael looks happy too, to see her. He’s on shift, part of her case, as it were. Meg can fake being professional better than he can, his grin is met with a cordial expression.

“So what made you call us in, Detective Haywood? Sure it’s a cluster, but with any years under your belt you’ve seen that.”

The blond man nods. “Six. And yes, many clusters of death. But it boiled down easy. By every parameter that we could measure, no one profited. No drugs gained, no money pocketed, no career boost, no reputation bolstered. Someone was just doing this out of pure joy.”

“Or torment,” Tyler comments.

“Um, well, yes,” Haywood stutters. “I suppose. We don’t get a lot of that here though.”

Michael jerks his head. “Why we called them, right? I don’t know how to deal with a mass murderer with remorse, and neither do you. But that shit’s up their fuckin’ creek.”

It’s not the best description of what their unit does. To be fair to Michael though, it’s hardly the chilliest reception they’ve ever gotten. And the International Unit has had some intense obstruction and crazy experiences Meg’s heard about over weekend drinks. Los Santos is practically another country hidden inside the States, and Meg’s going to take the mere lack of decorum as a win.

After a few hours of calls, texts, and photos from the dispatched members of the team, they’ve figured a few things out. 

The message painted on each crime scene’s wall -we live on a placid island of ignorance- turns out to be the first clause from a run on sentence by HP Lovecraft, the rest of it being ‘in the midst of the black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we voyage far’. 

The crime scenes are very staged. The murders are all in suburban houses. They vary from room to room but each includes an white area rug with a rounded jagged edge, like it was cut to shape with a box cutter. It’s placed top of pooled black paint poured on the floor. Unlikely to be a forensic countermeasure, but also unhelpful, the chemical composition has led to a common brand sold in multiple store. A Los Santos truth Meg hadn’t really thought about until now; cities with the highest drive-by numbers per capita must by necessity also be cities where home reno is a big business.

The profile is fairly easy to build, as far as these things go. The unsub is a white male, late twenties. The message on the wall is a clear sign of a literate, educated criminal. He is likely to appear arrogant and not fit well in social situations. The profile is only one step in catching a serial killer however, and Los Santos isn’t really a city where news conferences and a phone tipline are going to get him on a silver platter. Instead it’s up to the people who really know the ugly inhabitants of this city to pinpoint one whose darkness isn’t quite like the other ten shades of shadows.

Meg can tell from the second she meets Michael’s criminal informant that her boyfriend likes him. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Michael is a thrill seeker to the nth degree. Lindsay is bad enough, just by living in this godforsaken city, but it takes a certain kind of bat shit insanity to be a cop in the exponentially most criminal city in the world. Defying relationship norms by having interest in three rather than two is just another adrenaline junkie adventure.

Meg mentally vows within minutes to just let Michael have this. She tries to stay out of the minds and personalities of the people she loves, friends and families and lovers, but it’s difficult. It’s a career that eats into all communication. It’s easy enough to read Michael and know he needs the thrill of a piece on the side. What she’s not expecting over the next few hours is to grow to like Gavin himself. She’s stuck in close proximity as Gavin gathers information unavailable for even their tech expert to find, the kind of shit that’s not online. He is a babbling brook of dialogue, and there’s not much he says that Meg doesn’t find interesting.

She doesn’t feel bad for being attracted to him. He’s a criminal, yeah, but so are teachers, nurses, and landscapers in this place. So is Lindsay, for all she knows. Meg’s gone out of her way to not figure the finances of a two bedroom high rise apartment on a cashier’s salary. A cavalcade of pings during a background check is hardly what makes Gavin stand out. What does is his sense of humour, his surprising innocence considering his lifestyle, and his interest in alternative film styles, like rotoscoping and direct animation. He’s got the most amount of gb on his electronics Meg has ever seen, and it’s all loaded with experimental films. A few times, as Michael drives them to the next location Gavin insists will give the case more background, Gavin shows her something he thinks is especially outstanding. Not everything is to Meg’s taste, but it’s all interesting.

Eventually they’ve been downright deluged in opinions and facts about the victims from friend, coworker, and enemy points of view. Meg’s willing to bet they would have learned half or less without Gavin’s help. It’s time to check in with her team. Michael drops off Gavin at a cafe nowhere near where he picked the man up, and then they go back to the station to aggregate all the information they’ve learned with what other team members have learned. It becomes rapidly apparent that the unsub is murdering innovators- those who have, in the unsub’s point of view, dared to leave their safe island and sacrifice themselves to the black sea.

Being a profiler isn’t something that comes with regular hours. Lucky for her, they tend to sync with Michael and Lindsay’s weird hours. Or at least Michael’s. Lindsay will happily quit if she can’t get an evening off when Meg’s in town. She’s done it more than once. According to her, twenty four hour store cashier has a lot of turn over. Meg prefers to leave those details vague.

When they’ve done all they can for the night, most of the team goes to the hotel. Meg doesn’t have to go the bleached rough towels and rattling air conditioner route, thank god. She’s got a house to go to. She texts Lindsay while in the passenger seat of Michael’s shitty truck and by the time they’re home, Lindsay’s used her duplicate key to get in and start making mixed drinks.

“Jesus it’s good to see you,” Meg says emphatically. It’s hard to mean something more than Meg means it. Lindsay doesn’t even bother with words, just pulls Meg into an encompassing hug. 

Lindsay smells so good it’s crazy. It’s a sickeningly sweet vanilla citrus that Meg knows is from a drug store, but is better than any two hundred dollar designer scent Lindsay could possibly try. Meg wants to rub herself all over her as much as she wants to kiss her. She wants to hold Michael’s hand right now too. She really and truly does, making out is always better with contact from both of them. Unfortunately she feels uneasy, and Meg’s whole life is based on trusting gut instincts. Not only does the feeling prevent her from reaching for her boyfriend, it also pulls her away from her girlfriend far earlier than she’d usually separate.

“Oh sure, _she_ gets the body grinding. I get the ‘don’t even say hello and talk to Ryan instead’,” Michael bitches. 

“If Linds tried to grind on me _at work_ I’d ignore that too,” Meg replies, aiming for normalcy.

“Why don’t both of your bickering asses come into the kitchen, where the booze lives?”

“Woman’s got a point,” Michael says. 

The drink Lindsay has made them is pure alcohol. Meg’s had it before, and never regretted the experience. It’s the sweet and sour combination of raspberry Sourpuss and Blue Curacao. It’s misleadingly delicious, you’d never guess proof by taste. Meg takes a second sip, then puts it down. It’s not like she wants to have this conversation sober, but depending on the results, she best be. And there’s no question of postponing said conversation. Her brain’s just not built to ignore problems.

“I’m trying to not be the insecure long distance girlfriend. Really, I am. But I’m going, and Gavin’s not. Am I going to get texted in a few weeks that you and Lindsay are dumping me for him?” It’s incredibly blunt, yes. But Meg isn’t trying for an interrogation. She just wants to know if what they have can last, when nothing her co-workers have had has. 

“No.”

Huh. Watch him not deny introducing Gavin to Lindsay, and Lindsay not say she doesn’t like him. That says a lot. “That’s not very convincing. I know you like him. How could you not? I do.”

“No triad is an island.”

Meg scoffs. “A, you’ve mangled that quote, it’s no man is an island. It has nothing to do with triads keeping to themselves. B, did you really need to pick a quote with islands in them? Haven’t we had enough of that today?”

Michael shrugs. “Got it on the brain. Also, I fucking know I didn’t say it right. But a misquote is what I goddamn mean. There’s no way to just be a triad and not interact with anyone. Even if you were here twenty four seven, even if we all lived together, I’d still spend a ton of time with him. Wanting to be with him doesn’t make me, us, love you any less. You sound like one of those crackpot duoists.”

Meg crosses her arms. “I know a relationship needs more than two to be stable.” Hardly a fair accusation.

Lindsay cuts in between their rising voices. “So here’s a question. Have you ever thought about having a quad? Didn’t you ever get lonely in Virginia and wish there was someone there?”

“Of course.” Does she ever get lonely alone. What kind of stupid ass question is that? “But I don’t see how Gavin being in Los Santos helps me.”

“I don’t fucking know! But it’s not just me who wants to fuck him!” Michael shouts, classic New Jersey hand gesturing coming into play.

As always, it’s Lindsay who can cool a boiling situation. “That’s easy, isn’t it? If Meg and Michael both have careers they can’t give up, careers that are location dependent, why don’t Gavin and I be the commuters? Live for a month in Nevada, then road trip and live for a month in Virginia?”

“Are you kidding? That’s the least practical thing I’ve ever heard of.” As much as Meg appreciates Lindsay’s ability to diffuse a situation, her ideas aren’t always the strongest. 

“Maybe in general. But specific to us? I’d prefer it. It’s not like we couldn’t afford it. It’s not like there’s no room for us in either of your homes. Tell me how it wouldn’t work.”

“Well for one, does Gavin know what you’re volunteering him for? There’s no way he’ll-”

Michael interrupts. “Actually he would. His style of informing, moving locations is good for him.”

Meg grasps for a third issue -practicality and Gavin’s actual interest aside- and comes up empty. Michael can see her struggling, and dives in with what he thinks is the kill, a taste of temptation. “Look, we don’t have to try to make this all complicated right now. How about you just kiss him first, see if you like it?”

Meg takes her first real gulp of the sweet and sour drink. Lindsay and Michael probably think that it’s to stall for time, but it’s not the reason. It’s a drink of satisfaction, of anticipation. Make out with Gavin? That- that Meg can do.

“Text him,” she says, raspberry aftertaste making her cheeks tingle.

“Really?” Michael asks, incredulous enough that Meg knows he didn’t believe that his temptation gambit would work.

“Look, I can’t promise you a happy ending. But I think not trying it would be more damaging than trying it. I know you want him. Why should you be the only one to get what you want?”

Lindsay chimes in, “if I didn’t make this clear before, I also want to jump on that hairy, lanky, uncircumsized dick train.”

Meg has to laugh. For a year now she’s wanted, _prayed_ for the best possible outcome with Michael and Lindsay. If opening their relationship to a fourth is how to get that done, how to make Lindsay entertained and Michael satisfied, she could think of worse people than Gavin Free. Thank fuck for this case pushing everything forward.


End file.
